Elon will be joining its fourth conference affiliation in about a 17-year span when it buddies up with the Colonial Athletic Association for its next foray in its nomadic NCAA existence.

Even in this era of conference realignments, Elon tends to be a here-today, gone-tomorrow operation.

At this rate, Elon will have held about as many conference memberships as Division I league championships. Given that, the Phoenix might be hard to beat.

Today, the university will announce that it’s departing the Southern Conference for the more northern-based pastures and pavements of the CAA.

It’s fair to categorize Elon as opportunistic and forward thinking.

It’s also reasonable to call Elon ungrateful and greedy.

Elon ventured into the Division I landscape in the late 1990s, bidding farewell to the Division II South Atlantic League. From there, it has been a pretty good whirlwind.

The Big South Conference was the first landing spot, a place for Elon to immerse itself into the NCAA’s top level and escape the independent label in sports except for football. This membership was a relief for an athletics department that could have been left out, even then facing a period of time when it couldn’t participate for conference championships or honors.

Then along came the Southern Conference, rescuing Elon’s floundering football program. Suddenly, Elon was clustered with some of the elite schools on what was then the Division I-AA level for football along with a respected mid-major Division I collection of schools for other sports.

It’s not like Elon jumped to the front of the line on this one. The school wasn’t even in line.

So eyebrows were raised because the school could make the fortunate leap into the tradition-rich Southern Conference with so few credentials.

But there was a reason for this. Danny Morrison, the Southern Conference’s commissioner at the time, is a Burlington native with deep ties to Elon. That friendship with now-retired athletics director Dr. Alan White cultivated the rapid-fire transaction.

Morrison is now president of the Carolina Panthers, so he figures to have enough on his plate. He couldn’t foster this latest arrangement.

While the Southern Conference has lost some pieces since Morrison was in charge, it suited Elon well. It was better than what Elon had earned.

Yet in recent weeks as Elon insiders apparently have been assured that the Phoenix would be moving on to yet new conference territories, there has been an attitude that it has deserved better.

That’s clearly the message, dripping down from the unspoken words of the administration.

The translation is clear: It’s called backstabbing, as if the Southern Conference hadn’t done enough for this once sleepy, little college in the South that desperately wants to mingle with a different clientele.

A charming campus and a growing university, one that’s embarked on a never-ending mission to prop itself up and be seen.

Yeager will learn firsthand that the Phoenix is capable of competing well in some sports and not so well in others. It will lag behind in certain areas, but this school is willing to catch up.

Its facilities have been largely upgraded in the past decade, basically a requirement to contend in the Division I level. More scrutiny will fall on the basketball / volleyball arena, with Alumni Gym at the bottom rung of Southern Conference venues.